Background: The Lacy Lakeview, Texas, home where Angie Moore was killed in 2022 (Google Maps). Inset (left): Cynthia Ming (McLennan County Sheriff”s Office). Inset (right): Angie Moore (GoFundMe).
A Texas woman pleaded guilty to the murder of her neighbor, whom she fatally shot during a home invasion she claimed she did not remember.
Cynthia Ming, 54, was originally charged with capital murder in connection with the death of 45-year-old Angie Melissa Moore, who was shot dead in her Lacy Lakeview, Texas, home on Sept. 7, 2022. Moore had called 911 to report that Ming, her neighbor, was trying to break into her home through a window. By the time police arrived, Moore was dead of a gunshot wound to the head, and Ming was fleeing the house, completely naked and covered in blood.
In court documents obtained by local NBC affiliate KCEN, Ming told officers while she was in custody at the hospital that she “grabbed the gun from [Moore and] shot her in the head” because Moore “kill[ed] her dog.” Local CBS affiliate KWTX reported that Ming said she “then drank her blood.”
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According to the court documents, Ming spoke to a doctor, Dr. Lee Carter, on the night of the killing and said that she had been “electrocuted” by a live wire at her home before she went to Moore’s house. After that purported electrocution, she “just walked around all bugged out.” Ming told Carter, “That’s the last thing I remember, is the light fixture. But then I was talking to the law-dogs (police) about what I did… and I don’t even remember it.”
Carter diagnosed Ming as having borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, according to the court documents. However, she said she was sane at the time of the murder.
Ming initially pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity a week ago, but then changed her plea to guilty. She accepted a sentence of 50 years in prison with the possibility of parole in 25 years. Prosecutors said in court on Monday that they doubted Ming would be granted parole due to the nature of the crime.
Prosecutors Duncan Widmann and Luke McCowan said in a statement obtained by KWTX, “Since Ming will almost certainly never leave prison, this plea agreement achieves the same outcome a conviction for capital murder would have, while eliminating the risks associated with the trial and appeals processes. Those risks often increase in cases involving claims of insanity.”
Moore’s family was in the courtroom for the sentencing, including Moore’s parents, who read words from a song written by her 16-year-old son, Connor. Moore’s mother read, “She was Satan’s puppet, and she is going to hell if she doesn’t ask God for forgiveness for her sins … She shed my mother’s innocent blood… One day it will be worse for her when she stands before my almighty God.”
Moore’s mother told the court that her daughter endured years of “aggressive, demonic harassing” at Ming’s hands. She called Ming “a force of pure evil that lived across the street.”
